Poetry, Performance, and Art: Udje Dance Songs of Nigeria's Urhobo People

The Malian philosopher Hampaté Bâ states that in Africa, "a dying old man is a burning library" (qtd. in Sallah 35). Traditional African culture is oral, and the literature in the forms of epic, legend, folktale, song, and others is transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to another. Ba's metaphor of a burning library underscores both the limitations of an oral culture such as the traditional African and the urgent need to retrieve as much of the folklore as possible for study and preservation before its aged custodians die with their vast knowledge. While much is known of the poetic forms of African majority ethnic groups such as Akan dirges, Yoruba oriki and ijala, and Zulu izibongo, little is known of poetic creations of minority groups such as Urhobo udje dance songs, undoubtedly one of the most poetic of Africa's indigenous poetic forms.

Udje is a unique type of Urhobo dance in which rival quarters or towns perform songs composed from often exaggerated materials about the other side on an appointed day. Udje songs are thus dance songs sung when udje is being performed. Since there were no prisons in traditional Urhobo, major crimes were punished either by selling the offender into servitude or by execution. Minor crimes were, however, punished by satire. Udje dance songs fall into the corpus of satire. The songs strongly attack what the traditional society regards as vices. Occasionally, there are blatant lampoons as when barrenness, ugliness, and other natural deformities of a person are sung. The singers want what they consider to be positive norms of the society to be upheld. Thus, central to the concept of udje dance songs are the principles of correction and determent through punishment with "wounding" words.

Udje dance songs constitute an art form whose satiric poetry is highly imagistic and poignant. Their collection, transcription, translation, study, and preservation are necessary, not only because of the poetic vitality of the genre but also because such collection will prove a valuable means of social ethnographic understanding of the Urhobo people who produce them. Currently politically and economically marginalized in Nigeria, the Urhobo people and their oil-producing area will become important factors in Nigerian and global affairs as the country's democracy strengthens and oil continues to play a major role in the world economy. In an area already with multinational oil companies like Shell and Chevron, these songs could serve as a cultural orientation for outsiders posted to Warri, a city whose majority inhabitants are Urhobo and a city in which are found headquarters of many oil companies in Nigeria.

The songs are very relevant today as societies everywhere continue to fashion means of dealing with their lesser crimes and protecting their ethical and moral values. Their relevance transcends cultural and historical contexts. In fact, these songs serve as a lesson to today's journalists and publishers of tabloids. In the udje dance song tradition, excesses are checked since there are sanctions against falsehoods as well as lampoons against natural defects. The songs maintain a delicate balance between the general good of the society whose ethos must be upheld and respect for the law-abiding individual.

The Urhobo, numbering about three million people, occupy mainly the western and northern fringes of the Niger River delta region of the present Delta State of Nigeria. Large pockets of Urhobo people also live in the contiguous states of Bayelsa, Rivers, and Edo, and as immigrants in many Yoruba-speaking areas such as Ife, Lagos, and Okitipupa. Large communities of Urhobo migrants are now settled all over Nigeria, including Jos, Kano, Maiduguri, and Yola. Many have also settled in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Liberia.

The Urhobo in their present environment are said to be an amalgam of different waves of migrating groups and an indigenous group that absorbed them. The main group migrated from the Edo...